I'm trying to get a bit of the feel of x-wing, but slightly updated. I'm using accelerations rather than the x-wing setting the local velocity style controls, but I still want the same feel. I have spent quite some time working this out, and I think I have something close, you now drift slightly when flying round corners etc as the velocity vectors update due to the thrust kicking in.

I have a webstartable test client up, it's 14 meg because I put some music in early on. I can remove it again if it's too much of an issue (would only remove about 6 meg of the download). I would appreciate some feedback with constructive critisism.

I don't think momentum should be maintained on angular rotation, it makes it quite easy to lose control.

The logic is that if you were traveling in the local z axis, and you rotate 90 degrees, within a short time, you should once again be traveling in the local z axis, is that not what you are seing happen?

Or do you mean that moving the mouse should affect the rotational velocity instead rotational acceleration like it currently does?

yeah, roll, pitch and yaw rates should all be kept within sensible (human tollerable) limits.

I would imagine such a space craft would also automatically bring the crafts rotation to a stop when the controls are released, as I can't think of many situations where tumbling endlessly is a particularly helpful ability. (possibly with an override key if you realy realy want to be tumbling through space)

I could do with some limits on roll/pitch/yaw agreed . I imaged the being like a joystick, so pulling back on the joystick (moving the mouse down) would start you moving, centering it again would stop you (moving it back to where it was). I think thats how it should be. Does this seem very odd when you play?

I'm wondering if 1/2 the issue isn't vista though, when I run the game windowed, I don't have a mouse pointer, so I can't move it out the window causin the huge spinning you seem to be getting.

A constant roll rate will be useful for matching your roll rate to that of the hangar entrance on the space stations that rotate, that don't exist yet

anyways perhaps a useless comment(since I haven't played it) but have you looked at freelancer, I remember liking the controlls and also has a controll where you can disable the stability system on command allowyou to drift while flying (you can rotate the ship slowly wilst still going the same way, proved to provide intesting dogfights.

Oops, at a very quick guess I'd say thats because I've hard coded the number of samples at 4 for now, other than that, I can't think of anything I'm doing thats complicated in any way. There should be a hint in the traces that webstart dumps out.

I was getting some serious issues with webstart lagging, it would say stalled downloading for minutes at a time. I've just installed jdk 6 update 1 and it seems to have disappeared. It might be unrelated, it might be a coinsidence, but it's worked here for now

I've updated the webstart to use no FSAA and to use 16 instead of 24 depth bits. This isn't supposed to be a graphics demo, just a controls demo, so we don't need that lot right now.

I've also turned off the visual velocity/thrust vectors as they were a distraction rather than an aid in testing at this point

I'm guessing there should be a .trace file that was from the appropriate time.

Check for a line right near the top something likeINFO: org.newdawn.darkvoid.client.gui.DVSFJMEDisplay: Using jar:http://www.darkvoidonline.com/dvsf/dvsfdata.jar!/data/images/dvsf.png for properties dialog image

After that, the jme bits should start, and it sounds like it fails creating the display.

When I have a game client aimed at players, rather than a 'does this control system make sence' that I've targeted at a developer audience I might. For now, this is a noddy little demo to see what people think of the control system. If it crashes, then yes, I'd like to fix it, but I would anticipate that most people on JGO could manage to find some logs.

As I'm not doing anything graphically clever, I expected it to 'just work', but I over estimated the odds of that happening I think

One thing about those space-shooters is that there is 'too much' freedom. It only takes a few moments of not paying attention, to get completely lost in these three dimensions. After a while, I turned around and found the big fleet again (more by luck than anything else). The biggest problem is that there are no reference-points, unless you have a superb memory and navigate on the starmap. Maybe add some ehm... hydrogen gasclouds?

The controls don't really feel natural.. just think about it, when you want to steer in space, you won't tilt your spacecraft (it's not an airplane, there is no air/gas to justify that behaviour). We also need some visual feedback of the steering, to make it more natural - now it *feels* like vector-math, instead of fiddling with the thrusters a bit.

Update:Hm... I'm totally not into the space-sim genre, but I've seen some games that have a quite long (glowing) trace behind the spaceships, and a bigger viewingdistance from it - that might help.

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The lack of reference will be solved with some floating things, gas clouds or debris or something, and there will be trails from the ship. I'm anticipating a location read out too, plus a radar type thing with prehaps multiple levels of zoom, so if you get lost, you can find our way back to your mates. All valid points, but beyond this test.

The controls, you meantioned not needing to tilt in space?, do you mean the roll that appears to happen?, roll is attached to the keyboard right now exactly for this reason. The primary controls are pitch and yaw, purley so you travel in the direction you are looking. In theory there is no need to do that, but traveling sideways/backwards you really *would* get lost . Is that what you mean?, I'd like to clarify incase there is something that needs improving, which is the point of this test

The visual feedback of steering, do you mean you want to see some kind of thrusters on the front of the ship so you can see the thrust changes?, your point is you can't see the thrust changes, only the effect (you rotate slower or faster)?

This is not needed, although it might be convenient withG-forces 'n such so all the machinery in the spaceshipdoesn't shift all over the floor in a tight turn. Hmpf...

About the thrusters, just at the backside. Having steeringthrusters at the nose is too... realistic?

About the radar, you might want to make it logarithmic, sothat you have multiple-levels of zoom without 'transitions'.

About the controls...Some feature to break (to a hold) would be nice, becauseright now, when you try to turn, you might miss your target(a sitting duck) because you're circling around it. Withoutthe (debug) colored vectors it's hard to see whether you'removing or not - even with referencepoints, because theytend to be HUGE and too far way to determine your velocity.

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Withoutthe (debug) colored vectors it's hard to see whether you'removing or not - even with referencepoints, because theytend to be HUGE and too far way to determine your velocity.

This actually makes me feel more like I'm in space... more lost and alone

I've played the game, had no problems. I find the steering to airplane like, not as quite as good as I remember when I've played other space ship games. Maybe you could try with thrusters sideways and on top and below of the ship, like they have on raptors on "battlestar gallactica". That way ship would turn around it's center very fast and you would still have much velocity (well, the same velocity as space doesn't slow you down) from your old direction. Could be interesting.

btw. how about starting in one of those X fighter you have instead of this flat one which looks like one of those animals that wait for their pray at sea bottom

The lost and alone thing is part of what I'm going for. I liked the realistic manouvers of elite, but found that in combat, when the 2 players came at the fight from different sides, they just overshot each other by huge amounts because of how long it took to slow down, and I ended up having to spend a few minutes hitting F4 (or shitf F4 or what ever the key combo was) to time skip trying to slow down. On the other hand, I didn't want to go quite as far as x-wing, which is very very arcade style. I wanted something in between.

Currently, the 'physics' of the space flight does indeed have thrusters all over, it's just that players can't control them all yet . Moving the mouse sideways gives you some yaw thrust, which will yaw around the ships center (stay still when you first start and try it). Once you are moving, this effects your 'I want to be going this way' vector. The speed once it has rotated you should be the same. It's all done with 'fly by wire', if I turn that off, you are back to elite style controls. This may become a feature, lose the computer and you have to control it all yourself

Do you think the option to turn it on/off will add to the game play when it's a proper space combat thing?, that should be easy enough to do.

There will be limits on the speed of rotation and the velocity of the ship, but that will depend on which ship you have.

That is a really cool start. I thought that the controlls were generally quite OK, but as it is right now, it is quite easy to spin out of control. It also seems like one "slides" a bit much when turning at slow speeds. But that's just a matter of taste. I think you should try to make it as easy to control as possible and fun rather than realistick and really hard to get the ship to do what one wants. Radar, some sort of gyro and more things might give feedback of what is happening might make things easier, but hart to tell without trying. I think that joystick contol might work very well here. Given that a shot? Might be nice to slow the roll a bit automatically, sort of like most plane sims.

AND I really wanna blow things up! I mean, just to test how easy it is to target things

This little demo inspired me to go back and have a play of 'Babylon 5: I've Found Her ' - a freeware Fan made game that lets you fly a starfury.

It has ultra-realistic newtonian physics, but still manages to play ok.However one feature that seriously impacts on the playability is the uselessness of the 'match speed' function.It is a feature that has been stolen from both the Wing Commander & X-Wing series.... however, it hasn't been adapted to make it useful when dealing with true newtonian physics.In every dog fight, I find myself wishing that it was actually a 'match velocity vector' function; that would instruct the autopilot to make a best effort to match the targetted crafts flight trajectory. (without altering the attitude of the fighter)This would simplify the combat maneuvering significantly, as it would (more or less) allow the 2 craft to maneuver as it they were operating in the same coordinate system.I guess this isn't something you will have to worry about if you arn't making a realistic flight model.Still, no harm in putting the idea out there, as I've yet to see a game feature this flight control aid - definitely a USP

I've just updated the webstart. I've put up a location read out for those that want to know where 0,0,0 is . I've set up wasd keys to mirror the cursor keys, and I've added the 'T' key to turn on stabalisers. If you are out of control, hit T and it should bring things back. It's not designed to stop you instantly, it's designed to get the ship to a point where you can take back control, so just hold down T untill you feel comfortable with it again.

I've run it on an AMD2800+ with NVidia GeForce 7600 and it ran at a consistent 90 FPS at 1280*1024*32bits.

About the controls:Coming from helicopters in BattleField 2 and Desert Combat, I can't help but expect the mouse horizontal movement to control the roll. This gets very confusing very quickly :-)On the other hand, First-Person shooters (where horizontal mouse movement controls yaw, rather than roll), I usually don't play with the vertical mouse axis inverted. So when I get into "shooter" mode, I try to move the mouse up in order to look up. Once again; general confusion is the result!

Since you said you wanted the mouse to act like a joystick, I think you should go for the last, the plane-like controls.

If I may make a suggestion, I would have the CTRL-key switch between the two sets of controls. The "plane"-like controls have inertia dampeners active, so your spacecraft will act and feel like a plane in atmosphere. The "shooter"-like controls have no inertia dampeners, so while you look around and try to target a bogey, your plane will just continue in a newtonian straight line.

While it may feel a little arcade, I think it will provide interesting choices to the players: if they press CTRL to easily target something, it has the disadvantage of being an easy target themselves.It would be interesting to find out if the switch from CTRL to non-CTRL type flying will be confusing, because after all the vertical mouse axis will be inverted in the blink of an eye.

PS: most shooters have a checkbox "invert vertical mouse axis" in their options list. That is the simplest patch to your current control scheme, and it will keep me happy because I can play the thing like it's a flying first-person shooter.

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